On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 10:11:00AM -0400, Desjardins, Steve scripsit: > There's a market at the e-p1 price point. I have no idea what Leica > would sell this for,
Couple grand USD, as I recall. > but for everyone else it has to be below $1000. Olympus has sold a > bunch of e-p1's at the $800-900 range. There's a market for Olympus, who have stuffed themselves down a 4/3 rabbit hole, and who are effectively building an alternative pro camera market -- they're not really _at_ pro yet, but that's where they're going, or at least trying to go -- on the basis of the existing P&S camera form factor's default characteristics and expectations. I think this will do reasonably well for them for awhile. (I think everybody's going to get a digital-transition-equivalent hammering by and by; some combination of lens materials, non-silicon sensors, and synthetic imaging.) It's not clear that the e-p1 form factor is a "we're really making money, yes sir" market, even for Olympus. Pentax, who do not understand the modern P&S form factor, think it's silly, obviously ineffective, and who appear to hate and fear EVIL as an idea, wouldn't have an institutional prayer of doing something like that well. Also, the sensor size *does* matter; at APS-C sensor size, and thus APS-C production volumes and prices, it's really unclear that you can get an interchangeable lens compact camera under 1 kUSD. Existing fixed-lens high end compacts would seem to argue against this, even. Pentax's current problems aren't technical. They're a combination of marketing and historical accidents of position. Which is not to say I don't think they could do well with an alternative form factor camera; I just don't think that the "very capable P&S" form factor is the form factor they could do well with, because it's not a form factor they believe in. A palmcorder-like form-factor recording sport optic, now; Pentax could do quite a lot with that. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
